Tag: Symptoms

Kidney Stones: Like I Needed That, Too

File this under, “lucky me”.

Well, I started experiencing nausea with no discernable cause last week. Wasn’t too bad and I assumed it was, I dunno, just my body being weird. Or maybe the pack of raw sugar snap peas that I had eaten the day before.

But the next day I woke up with middle back pain. I assumed that it was due to a new strength training workout that is known for evoking muscle soreness, and I figured that I’d just overdone it.

The nausea got worse, the backpain didn’t abate.

After a few days of this I decided to make an appoinment to get it checked out. This was partly because Dr. Google suggested that this could be an issue with my gall bladder or a kidney stone. I waved the gall bladder possibility off because the symptoms didn’t seem to match…but the kidney stones? Kind of ridiculous, I thought. I regularly drank a lot of water, ate limited processed food, was a vegetarian…you get the gist. I didn’t think I had the most common risk factors for it.

Then again, I didn’t have the most common risk factors for breast cancer either.

My nurse practitioner listened to my complaints and pronounced the most likely diagnosis: kidney stones.

I just don’t get it.

Why do these things happen?

This…is not gonna be fun.
(Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash)

After trying to live an exemplary life diet and exercise-wise, breastfeeding my kids and whatnot, seven years ago I got cancer. That’s one of the most terrifying diagnoses you can get.

I did not enjoy treatment. But eventually I got through it and learned to deal with the uncertainties that cancer brings.

Now, I may have a kidney stone. A “more painful than childbirth” kidney stone, which people that I’ve told like to point out is *ahem* very painful. Exceptionally painful. Severely painful. Hello, these reminders don’t help.

On the bright side, this probably won’t kill me. I’ll only wish that I were dead.

I was already thinking about how ridiculously unfortunate it was that the stressors I’m currently dealing with were taking place all at once (that’s another story that I won’t bore you with). I was not asking for yet another one.

And it gets even worse: I was given the opportunity to teach yoga to cancer survivors in about a month, something that I was so excited about! It was such an amazing chance to do exactly the thing for which I become a registered yoga teacher.

By the way, the average time for a kidney stone to pass is, you guessed it, a month. (To be fair, I’ve also heard anywhere from 1 to 6 weeks, so it kind of depends whom you ask). The timing just sucks.

I learned that the main protein sources for vegetarians are very high in oxalates, which are some of the most likely culprits in the formation of kidney stones. As a matter of fact, so much healthy food (dark leafy greens, for example) is actually high in oxalates, with spinach being number one. Who was eating spinach almost daily? Right here, me!

In the meantime, conflicting information on the internet about what I should be eating is stressful because I feel like I’m making things worse every time I put food in my mouth. My main staples are coming up as no-nos.

So what am I going to do? Try not to catastrophize. My mind is my worst enemy and comes up with all kinds of unpleasant possibilities as I wait for urine test results and probably a CT scan.

I’m going to ride this out the best that I can. That means keep practice teaching for my yoga class and consider this another test of how well I can prevent my scary thoughts from dragging me down a frightening rabbit hole.

Update when I know more.

And Now We Wait…

Last Monday night my daughter and I noticed that we had sore throats. No big deal most of the time, but we’re in the middle of a global pandemic.

Of course, a sore throat can develop for a number of reasons. And we’ve been washing our hands, using hand sanitizer when soap and water aren’t available, keeping our distance from people. Nothing much to worry about, right?

Right. Except that it seems like a sibling of mine had actually suffered through an illness resembling COVID-19, with first symptoms appearing over a month ago, with a gradual onset. At that point, like many in the United States he wasn’t in a position to get tested (and with a fever of 103.9, he wasn’t about to drive himself to the doctor).

Now, I haven’t been in physical contact with him for about a year. But since I had a sore throat, I casually asked him what his symptoms were. I mean, I wasn’t exhibiting the same COVID-19 indicators everyone talks about.

Here we go again.

Apparently, his illness also started with a sore throat, no other symptoms for about a week, at which point the cough started. That was followed by a shortness of breath and fever, including two days that the fever was dangerously high. Eventually, the symptoms subsided, with the sensation of an elephant sitting on his chest, along with a lingering cough, being the last to go.

This would be extremely disconcerting to me, if not for the fact the sore throats that both my daughter and I had lasted only a few days before going away.

Phew, right? Well, kind of. Because if this had been COVID-19, we would have been dealing with the monster head-on. Now, we’re prepped for a fight with no opponent. Back to being vigilant, washing hands and crossing fingers.

Sound familiar? Any cancer survivor will tell you they’ve been down this road. It’s all about the waiting, trying to shed the anxiety about cancer coming back. Trying to shed the hypervigilance. There is no “end date”, there’s just an “I’ve made it this far so maybe my risk is decreasing?”

With COVID-19, we experience that lack of “end date” on a smaller scale. Eventually, there’ll be a vaccine. But we have no idea how long we’ll be waiting and how long our lives are going to be so drastically different. However, relief will eventually come and we can exhale.

As a cancer survivor, I’m kind of jealous.